Research

Early-life health shapes cognitive skills and human capital. In India, widespread open defecation without using a toilet is an important source of childhood disease. We study the effects on childhood cognitive achievement of early-life exposure to India’s Total Sanitation Campaign...Read More..

We study the effect of a large rural public works program on short-term migration from rural to urban areas in India. Using cross-state variation in public employment provision for identification, we find that participation to the program significantly reduces short-term...Read More..

Using data from the National Crime Records Bureau and the National Family Health Surveys, this article estimates, conservatively, the under-reporting of violence against women in India. I calculate under-reporting of sexual and physical violence, both for violence committed by “men...Read More..

Despite economic growth, government latrine construction, and increasing recognition among policy-makers that it constitutes a health and human capital crisis, open defecation remains stubbornly widespread in rural India. Indeed, 67% of rural Indian households in the 2011 census reported defecating...Read More..

Despite economic growth, government latrine construction, and increasing recognition among policy-makers that it constitutes a health and human capital crisis, open defecation remains stubbornly widespread in rural India. Indeed, 67% of rural Indian households in the 2011 census reported defecating...Read More..

The Janani Suraksha Yojana, India’s “safe motherhood program,” is a conditional cash transfer to encourage women to give birth in health facilities. Despite the program’s apparent success increasing facility-based births, quantitative evaluations have not found corresponding improvements in health outcomes....Read More..

Although most people in India defecate in the open without using a latrine, and most people in the world who defecate in the open live in India, the fraction of households in India who defecate in the open decreased between...Read More..

Abstract: Despite profoundly negative health consequences of indoor air pollution, most rural Indian households cook using traditional biomass fuel, rather than cleaner cooking fuel. Although many factors contribute to households’ continued use of solid fuels, this paper focuses on one: women’s intra-household status. We...Read More..

What are the relationships between wealth and children’s health in India’s states that are as populous as many other countries? Presenting a state-level analysis of the association between state net domestic product per capita and three children’s health indicators, this...Read More..

Children in West Bengal and Bangladesh are presumed to share the same distribution of genetic height potential. In West Bengal they are richer, on average, and are therefore slightly taller. However, when wealth is held constant, children in Bangladesh are taller. This gap can be fully accounted for by...Read More..

Poor people often exhibit puzzlingly high sensitivity to low prices of important consumer health goods. This paper proposes decision costs as one explanation: whether a person buys at a price depends on whether she carefully considers the offer, which itself depends on...Read More..

Even compared with neighbouring countries, latrine use is especially uncommon in India. How might caste – historically associated with sanitation inequality – interact with government sanitation policy?Using data from Rajasthan state, we investigate the effect of caste-based reservations for village chairmen...Read More..

Ending widespread open defecation and pursuing feasible methods of safe excreta disposal must be the top policy priorities for India. This paper draws policy lessons from the first 10 years of latrine construction under India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), which...Read More..

Do the repayment requirements of the classic microfinance contract inhibit investment in high-return but illiquid business opportunities among the poor? Using a field experiment, we compare the classic contract which requires that repayment begin immediately after loan disbursement to a contract that includes a...Read More..

Poor sanitation remains a major public health concern linked to several important health outcomes; emerging evidence indicates a link to childhood stunting. In India over half of the population defecates in the open; the prevalence of stunting remains very high. Recently published...Read More..

A survey of the functioning of the National Old-Age Pension Scheme in two districts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh reveals that beneficiaries have difficulties in accessing the banking system and face inordinate delays in receiving their meagre pensions. Yet, the scheme functions as an important provider...Read More..